#hopefully this isn’t coming across conscending cuz I genuinely don’t mean it to be

[mtreebeardiles]

This is something I keep coming back to, prompted by various things (the most recent of which being writing in video games) and I gotta ask…

Why is the novel put on a pedestal?

Im asking as someone who does love reading books, as preferred media goes the novel is definitely number one, so I struggle to understand how people who do not seem to like reading nevertheless use ‘novel’ as a benchmark to determine whether writing is good or not

Or, for those aspiring to create, why non-readers seem to feel the novel is the only format to express their creativity? Like… and I mean this sincerely… but why on earth would you want to force yourself to write something in a format you already don’t enjoy?

It’s more than the practical issues — if you don’t read (and I am including audiobooks in this, listening to a book counts as reading to me), and you don’t *like* to read, you’re going to have a hard time writing due to that lack of exposure to the mechanics of writing. It’s also the fact that… the novel is but one of many genres you could be exploring, and learning about, and writing in, for things you might actually enjoy.

Video game writing should not be judged on the merits befitting a novel because video game writing is not the translation of a story from novel form. It’s a script.

Television, movies, radio plays, musicals, plays… it’s all scriptwriting/screenwriting. So why are they being compared to a completely different genre?

If you don’t like to read, but you do enjoy movies, tv, video games… why not look into scriptwriting? You don’t have to be an artist, you don’t have to be an actor, to write the script of a thing.

Why write in a format you don’t enjoy, when you could be learning more about the format of things you do?